From David Thomson, Bishop of Huntingdon

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Some facts about immigration from New Scientist

Labour migration into Western Europe has been falling steadily since 2007

Although refugee numbers have been rising since the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2010, they are still lower than those of 1992 and the disintegration of Yugoslavia

Since 2000 UK immigrants have paid more into the government coffers than then have taken out in benefits (£5bn net 2000-2011)

And in the same period they were less likely than native Brits to be on benefits and no more likely to live in social housing

Non-Europeans living in the UK since 1995 brought £35bn of education with them

German state governments said recently that nevertheless “every euro we spend on training migrants is a euro to avoid a shortage of skilled labour”

NS also reports in passing on climate change as a trigger for the Syrian refugee crisis, not something that gets mentioned much. With that in mind, we have to see the present crisis as something of a dress rehearsal for much bigger migrations and, I fear, tragedies to come.